Copic Coloring for Distressed Wood

I was trying to achieve a distressed/worn/aged look on a wooden fence for the Copic Creations challenge of WOOD. Aside from the great Marianne Walker’s I Like Markers blog, I wasn’t able to find any other tutorials on this subject! So, I thought I would show you the steps I took to color this fence stamp. Please keep in mind, I am not a Copic teacher – merely a Copic lover! 🙂

The Copic colors I used are:

E31 ~ Brick Beige (my lightest color)

E33 ~ Sand (medium color for shading)

E43 ~ Dull Ivory (medium color)

E57 ~ Light Walnut (darkest color)

Using my lightest color, E31 ~ Brick Beige, I outline each section of the fence.

I then continue to color-in each section with the same E31. To quote Marianne, it’s okay if your coloring at this point is streaky, just be sure to color with the grain of the wood.

My next step is to add “streaks” in the mid-range color, E43 ~ Dull Ivory.

To add the darkest color, you do not want to be very heavy-handed ~ add very thin, short highlights. I used the point of the broad end of the marker for this process, using E57 ~ Light Walnut.

Next, I again used E31 ~ Brick Beige to lightly blend the two darker colors together.

The final step for me is to use another medium toned color, E33~ Sand to add some shadow tones to the fence in areas that I wanted to look a little more distressed.

That’s it! Obviously, there are many brown choices in Copic colors, but I wanted to show you my choices for an aged wooden fence.

Hope this is helpful… please don’t hesitate to ask if you have any questions!